Women and War Work Part 16

Who among us has the right to cast the first stone?

WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR WOMEN

"Give her of the fruits of her lands and let her own words praise her in the gates."

--PROV., Chap 31.

CHAPTER XIII

WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR WOMEN

The war has done already, with us, such great things for women, so many of them so naturally accepted now, that it is almost difficult to get back in thought, and realize where we stood when it broke out.

General s.m.u.ts, in one of his speeches, said, "Under stress of great difficulty practically everything breaks down ultimately, and the only things that survive are really the simple human feelings of loyalty and comradeship to your fellows, and patriotism, which can stand any strain and bear you through all difficulty and privation. We soldiers know the extraordinary value of these simple feelings, how far they go and what strain they can bear, and how, ultimately, they support the whole weight of civilization."

In this war our men, in their dealings with us, have got down more and more to simple fundamental truths and facts--loyalty and comradeship, founded on our common patriotism. We have got nearer and nearer to the ideal so many of us long for, equal right to serve and help. The great fundamental establishment of political rights for women has come with us. When war broke out, women's suffrage was winning all the time a greater and greater ma.s.s of adherents, a majority of the House was pledged to vote for it and had been for years, the Trade Unions and Labour Party stood solid for it, but the motive to act seemed lacking.

War came, and every political party in our country laid aside political agitation. No party meetings have been held since August, 1914. Suffragists and anti-suffragists did the same. The great body of const.i.tutional suffragists kept their organization intact but used it for "sustaining the vital energies of the nation." Relief Work, Hospital Work and Supplies, Child Welfare, Comforts, Workrooms, help for professional women, work for Belgian refugees, work in canteens and huts, work for the Soldiers and Sailors Families' a.s.sociation, Schools for Mothers, Girls' Clubs--into everything the Suffrage societies fling themselves with ardour, zeal and ability. No women knew better how to organize, no women better how to educate and win help. They formed an admirable Women's Interests Committee, and looked after all women's interests excellently.

When the Government issued its first appeal for women volunteers for munitions and land, etc., it asked the Suffrage societies to circulate them and to help them to secure the needed labour from women.

As the war went on it became clearer and clearer that the men of the country saw more and more vividly why suffragists had asked for votes--and more and more were impressed with the value of their work.

At meetings to do propaganda for Government appeals, when women spoke on the needs of the country, men everywhere, although it had nothing to do with the appeal, and had never been mentioned, declared their conversion to Women's Suffrage in the War.

Women pointed out that they did not want Women's Suffrage as a reward--but as a simple right. They had not worked for a reward, but for their country, as any citizen would, but, in our country, the great converting power is practical proof of value and they had that overwhelmingly in our work. The Press came out practically solidly for Women's Suffrage. The work of women was praised in every paper and one declared, "It cannot be tolerable that we should return to the old struggle about admitting them to the franchise." Eminent Anti-Suffragists, inside and outside of the House of Commons, frankly admitted their conversion. Mr. Asquith, the old enemy of Women's Suffrage, said in a memorable speech: "They presented to me not only a reasonable, but, I think, from their point of view, an unanswerable case.... They say that when the war comes to an end, and when the process of industrial reconstruction has to be set on foot, have not the women a special claim to be heard on the many questions which will arise directly affecting their interests, and possibly meaning for them large displacement of labour? I cannot think that the House will deny that, and, I say quite frankly, that I cannot deny that claim."

It was clear the whole question of franchise would need to be gone into--the soldiers' vote was lost to him under our system when he was away, and the sailors' redistribution was long overdue, an election, as things were, would be absolutely unrepresentative. So after several attempts to deal with the problem in sections, a Committee was set up under the Speaker of the House of Commons to go into the whole question of Franchise reform and registration.

The Committee was composed of five Peers and twenty-seven members of the House of Commons, and started its work in October, 1916, and in its report, April, 1917, it recommended, by a majority, that a measure of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt should be given to women.

The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Consultative Committee, which had been formed in 1916 by the N.U.W.S.S., of representatives of all const.i.tutional societies, presented various memorials, notably an admirable memorandum of women's work and opinion in favour, prepared by the National Union for the Speakers' Conference during its sittings. After its recommendations while the bill was being drafted, Mrs. Henry Fawcett, LL.D., the President of the N.U.W.S.S., headed a deputation received by the Premier, Mr. Lloyd George, who has always been a supporter of Women's Suffrage. This was certainly one of the most representative and interesting deputations that ever went to Downing Street. It numbered over fifty and every woman in it represented a great section of industrial and war workers--Miss Mary MacArthur, the Trade Union Leader was there, and Miss Margaret Bondfield, Mrs. Flora Annie Steele, the auth.o.r.ess; Lady Forbes Robertson, for actresses; Miss Adelaide Anderson, our Chief Women Factory Inspector; Mrs. Oliver Strachey, Parliamentary Honourable Secretary of the National Union, whose work has been tireless and invaluable in the House; a woman munition worker, a woman conductor, a railway woman worker, a woman chemist, a woman from a bank, a clerk, a shipyard worker, a nurse, a V.A.D., an eminent woman Doctor, a peeress in Lady Cowdray, who has done so much for the British Women's Hospitals and so many other war objects, and women representatives of every calling in the nation at peace and war. Mrs.

Pankhurst, who has been very active in war work, was also present on the Premier's invitation, and Mrs. Fawcett brought a Welshwoman who made her plea in her own language, the Premier's own, too, and the one he loves to hear. In his reply, he a.s.sured them the bill would contain a measure of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt for women as drafted, and he was quite sure the House would carry it.

The recommendations of the Speakers' Conference were an agreed compromise, and the Representation of the People Bill, as it was called on its introduction, has gone through very much on the lines of the recommendations. It arranges for postal or proxy votes for the soldier, the sailor and the merchant seaman, it simplifies the qualifications for men, it retains the University vote for men and extends it to women, and it enfranchises women of thirty years of age on a residence qualification, and all wives of voters of the same age.

It disfranchises, for the time, the conscientious objector who will do no national service. The age at which our men vote is twenty-one. The higher age of the women was a compromise, which was accepted by all women's societies and by labour women, though it was not the terms they stood for--equality.

If we had it on the same terms as men, we should very greatly outnumber the men. There were over a million more women than men before the war and a new electorate greater than all the men's numbers brought in at once was not considered wise. To press for it would have wrecked our chances.

This measure enfranchises six million women, and about ten million men are now voters, so we have a very fair proportion.

The women's clause was carried, with only thirty-five dissentients and later only seventeen voted against it.

In this same bill, with practically no discussion, an amendment was carried enfranchising the wives of local government electors.

It is difficult to adequately express the confidence, the desire, and the willingness to co-operate, that there is now between our men and women.

We know, too, that the great woman's movement of our country, which has worked to this end for fifty years and numbered our greatest women among its adherents, has had much to do with the ability of our women to take the great part they have in this crisis. If women had not toiled and opened education and opportunities to women, and preached the necessity of full service, we could not have done it.

One great thing the war has done for our women is to draw us all closely together--in common sorrows, hopes and fears, we find how much we are one and in so much of our work women of every rank of life are together. We had that union before in many ways, but never so completely as now. _Punch_ has a delightful picture that summed up how we are mixed in soldier's canteens, and huts and buffets, and Hospitals, which show a little Londoner saying to a meek member of the aristocracy "washing up," "Nar, then, Lady Halexandra, 'urry up with them plaites," and we have an amusing little play of the same kind.

The society girl who washes down the Hospital steps, and washes up for hours, and carries meals up and down stairs in her work, week after week, and month after month, and year after year, in our Hospitals, knows what work is now, and the soldier who is served, and the soldier's sister and wife, learns something, too, about her that is worth learning.

We have also learned a great deal in our welfare work, and the welfare supervisors and the workers both have benefited, and the heads of the innumerable hostels, which we have built everywhere for our girls--dozens in our new Government-built munition cities, have been of very real help and service to the girls. A tactful, sensible, educated woman has a great deal to give that helps the younger girl, and can look after and advise her as to health, work, leisure and amus.e.m.e.nts in a way that leaves real lasting benefit.

In the munition works, well educated women, women with plenty of money, women who never worked before, work year after year beside the working girl. Just at first some of the working girls were not quite sure of her, but it is all right long, long ago, and they mutually admire each other. The well-off woman works her hours and takes her pay, and takes it very proudly. I have been told many times by these women who, for the first time know the joy of earning money, "I never felt so proud in my life as when I got my first week's money." And the men in the factories learn a lot, too. "Women have been too much kept back," was the comment of a foreman in a sh.e.l.l factory to the Chief Woman Factory Inspector on a visit she was paying to it. The skilled men, teaching the women, have learned a great deal about them, too, and have helped the women in so many ways. Men have been amazed at the ability and power and capacity for work of the women and are, on the whole, very willing to say so and express their admiration.

One munition girl writes: "The timekeeper, quite a gorgeous gentleman in uniform, gave us quite a welcome.... The charge-hand of the Welder's shop helped us to start, and stayed with us most of Friday.

He was most kind, and showed us the best way to tackle each job, did one for us, and then watched us doing it."

Another says, "Our foreman is a dear old man, so kind and full of fun.

The men welders are awfully good to us."

In considering the practical facts of new opportunities for women, one thing is clear. Ma.s.ses of our women took their new work as "temporary war workers," but as the war has gone on, it has become clearer and clearer that, in many cases, these tasks are going to be permanently open to women. One reason is that many of the men will never return to take up their work again--another, that many of them will never return to what they did before.

They have been living in the open-air, doing such different things, such big vistas have opened out that they will never be content to go back to some of their tasks. There is the other fact that we, like every other country, will need to repair and renovate so much, will need to create new and more industries, will need to add to our productiveness to pay off our burdens of debt, and to carry out our schemes of reconstruction, so women will still be needed. Our women, in still greater numbers, will not be able to marry, and the best thing for any nation and any set of women is to do work, and there will be plenty of room for all the work our women can do. Many will go back to home work, of course; there are large numbers who are working in our country, only while their husbands are away, and when they return will find their work in their homes again.

We are offering special training opportunities to the young widow of the soldier or officer.

In special branches of work our opportunities are very much greater and better. Medicine is one of the professions in which women have very specially made good. Better training opportunities have opened, more funds have been raised to enable women of small means to get medical education, and the Queen herself gave a portion of a gift of money she received, for this purpose. Most medical appointments are open to them now and they have been urged by the great medical bodies to enter for training in still greater numbers in the different Universities, and have done so.

More research is being done by them in every department. In professions such as accountancy, architecture, a.n.a.lytical chemistry, more and more women are entering. In the banking world women have done very satisfactory work, and one London bank manager, asked to say what he thought of prospects after the war, says he is very strongly of opinion it will continue to be a profession for women after the war.

This manager thinks the question of higher administrative posts being open to women will depend entirely on themselves and their work, and what they prove capable of achieving and holding, they will certainly have.

In the war, one profession, in particular, has come nearer to finding its rightful place than ever before--the teaching profession. Their salaries which, in too many cases, were disgracefully low, have been raised. The woman teacher has shown her capacity in new fields of work in the boys' schools, but it is in another sense that their profession, both men and women, but very specially the women, have achieved a very real gain in the war.

The teachers of the country have done a very great deal of war work of every kind. The National Register of 1915 was largely done by their labour. The War Savings a.s.sociations and Committees owe a great debt to teachers and inspectors, who are the backbone of the movement, headmistresses are asked constantly to help in securing trained women, taught to work in Hospitals on their holidays, on land, in organizing supplies and comforts in canteens and clubs, and more and more are put on official Committees in their towns and districts.

It means the teacher is finding the status and position the teachers in their profession ought to have in their communities, and the war has done a great deal towards achieving that desirable end, though there is still a good deal to be done.

In the Government Service there has undoubtedly been great opportunities for women, especially those of organizing, executive and secretarial ability--and in many cases the payment in higher posts is identical for men and women, and higher posts, if they have the ability, are freely given to women and the whole position of women in our Civil Service is improved. In the very highest posts, such as those of Insurance and Feeble-minded Commissioners, etc., women before the war received the same salaries as men.

The organizing ability and the common sense way in which our women in voluntary organization, quite rapidly, themselves decided what organizations were unnecessary and merely duplicating others, and refused to help them, so that they died out quite quickly, roused admiration, and the war has educated vast numbers of women in organization and executive ability. Women who never in their lives organized anything, and never kept an account properly, are doing all kinds of useful work. One nice middle-aged lady whose War Savings a.s.sociation accounts were being kept wrongly, or rather were not really being kept at all, when told they must be done fully and correctly by one of our National Committee representatives, said, "Oh, but you see, I never did anything but crochet before the war"; but we have succeeded in making even the crochet ladies keep accounts and do wonderful things.

In the great world of mechanics and engineering, women are doing a wonderful amount of work and, there is no doubt, will remain in certain departments after the war. One danger there is in the women's att.i.tude--so many of our women have learned one branch of work very quickly, that there probably will be a tendency to believe that anything can be learned as easily. There are only certain departments of mechanics that can be learned in a few months' time, and women will probably go on doing these. Such work as theirs in optical munitions, has shown their very special apt.i.tude for it and in law-making, etc., they will be used more and more. Women have successfully done tool-setting and can go on with that. The training for civil and mechanical engineering is long, but there will be, if women are keen and will train, plenty of opportunity for them in peace-time occupations in civil, mechanical or electrical branches in connection with munic.i.p.al, sanitary and household questions and in laundries, farms, etc. The women architects and these women could very well co-operate closely.

Women clerks and secretaries will remain largely after the war.

Fewer men will want these posts as we are convinced there will be big movements among our men to more active work, to the land and to the Dominions overseas.

Women on the land will in numbers stay there, and there is a distinct movement among women with capital to go in for farming, market gardening, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc., still more.

The war has made more of our fathers and mothers realize the right of their daughters to education and training, and there are very few parents in our country now, who think a girl needs to know nothing very practical, and has no need to go in for a profession. Our women's colleges have more students than ever and the war has done great things in breaking down these old conventional ideas. The war, in fact, has shaken the very foundations of the old Victorian beliefs in the limited sphere of women to atoms. Our sphere is now very much more what every human being's sphere is and ought to be--the place and work in which our capacity, ability or genius finds its fullest vent--and there is no need to worry about restricting women or anyone else to particular spheres--if they cannot do it, they cannot fill the sphere, and that test decides. The dear old Victorian dugouts grow fewer and fewer in number, but we never must forget that the great powers of women have not come in a night, miraculously, in the war. They are the result of long years of patient work before, and we women, who have had these great opportunities, must see to it that we n.o.bly carry on the traditions of teaching and training and qualifying ourselves for service, bequeathed to us from older generations.